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Solid-state array maker GreenBytes has raised $12 million in its second round of funding, with a goal of making SSD technology more energy-efficient while still keeping up performance, the company announced this morning.

The new round shows that the conversation around solid-state drives, which are much faster than traditional hard disk drive, isn’t letting up. Just a few weeks ago, EMC paid more than $400 million for flash-memory storage company XtremIO. GreenBytes’ stated goals are slightly different from EMC’s and XtremIO, but since they are all working on SSD arrays, there is some cross-over that will lead to competition.

Bob Petrocelli, CEO and CTO of GreenBytes, explained that he expects enterprise companies to quickly replace traditional hard drives in favor of SSD technology because they will see better data performance and other benefits.

“Primary storage optimization is accelerating the viability of flash storage in the enterprise, and we expect magnetic storage will be replaced with SSD technology faster than most analysts now predict,” Petrocelli said in a statement.

The second round of funding was led by Generation Investment Management, with participation from Battery Ventures and GreenBytes management.

“The explosion in the volume of digital data, combined with the performance demands of I/O-intensive applications such as virtualization and analytics, has escalated data storage to a mission-critical level,” said Greg Wasserman, partner at Generation Investment Management, in a statement. “Legacy storage technology and data centers with tightening power and rack space budgets simply cannot keep pace with today’s demands. With its cutting-edge utilization of innovative software optimizations and solid state technology, GreenBytes has engineered a storage platform that delivers a truly impressive mix of performance and price, while simultaneously reducing the energy intensity of data.”